The Ascent process...

I would have liked a little more time on this, but that is often the case. I had just over a week to get it done, so I had to take a couple of 'short-cuts' here and there. It's painted on oil paper which I very rarely use. It tends to be either canvas or board that I work on, but actually it felt fine after I primed it with Clear Gesso (this gave it a bit of 'tooth', as the paper was relatively smooth). Instead of starting with an imprimatura (a thin wash of colour, usually a neutral, to cover the whole image and set the basic mood), I blocked in the basic light and dark masses with a quick ebauche (a preliminary layer of semitransparent oil colour). Once I set down the basic value structure, I worked on the sky first, and gradually moved to the middle, and then foreground figure, and ended up painting the birds last. I think the motion blur on the birds is too subtle now in hindsight. I should have pushed that further. In fact, I would have liked to spend another day on the birds, but alas, the time just wasn't there. I used a double complementary pairing for this painting; for the background (including the buildings) I used orange and blue, and for the foreground I went with a more violet and yellow-orange approach.